When the wind blew in a northerly direction on the Shetland island of Papa Stour, the locals would often hear a singing voice carried on the gusts. The yodelling drowned out the sound of the engine pushing Thomas Fraser’s fishing boat through the water as he ferried his lobster catch to shore. Thirty years after his death, Fraser’s voice can still be heard, even across the Atlantic.

As a young man, Fraser listened to American Forces Radio broadcasts during the second world war and was beguiled by the early country and western music being pioneered by the likes of Jimmie Rodgers. There was something in the wistful sound and plaintive lyrics that engaged with the isolation and solemn grind of life in a croft and on the seas.

An accomplished musician — by 10, he had already mastered the fiddle, guitar and piano — Fraser learned how to play country music by listening to records on a gramophone.

When electricity arrived on the islands in 1953, he bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Such was the popularity of his music around Shetland, he began receiving requests for recordings. He’d be sent blank tapes by post and would return them full of songs. With the passage of time, the tapes were forgotten until Fraser’s daughter, May, and her son, Karl Simpson, found a batch in an uncle’s cupboard eight years ago.

“I was blown away,” says Simpson. “I’d been into a lot of blues, after getting into Led Zeppelin, and it was just like the stuff I’d been listening to. It had the same grainy quality to it. I thought, I’m going to have to do something here, because the reels were starting to fade and disintegrate.”

With the help of a sound engineer, Simpson converted the recordings onto CD and released a compilation called Long Gone Lonesome Blues.

The response was startling, with airplay on country and western radio shows and encouraging critical reviews. Simpson and his mother were then invited to the 21st annual Country Music Conference in Nashville, where May performed and Fraser’s recordings were catalogued.

The success led to people on Shetland, and beyond, rediscovering tapes that Fraser had distributed, and new material was restored and released. An annual memorial concert is held on Burra, Fraser’s birthplace, every November, and Simpson plans a fourth and final CD in two years’ time.

When he died, aged 50, after a fishing accident, Fraser had left about 700 recordings, although never of his own songs.

“It was a hobby to him — he never thought himself worthy of being a proper musician,” Simpson says. “And he only ever performed informally. Once, he was on a boat landing its catch at one of the northeast ports. He and a fiddle player struck up a tune and all of a sudden there were 50 or 60 people on the quayside. They were invited to a local bar and, apparently, that night the place was full.”

Fraser is an unlikely country and western figure, but he has far outgrown his Shetland surroundings.

Shetland Lone Star, Friday, December 19, BBC2 Scotland, 10pm

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010